This post is inspired by cartoons and comments on David’s Hayward’s excellent blog “NakedPastor“. David is an ex-pastor and an unchurched ‘Christian’ who uses his art to illustrate how he wrestles with being an expat [1].

Religion & languages hauntingly share many properties such that, understanding the sociological, philosophical and evolutionary properties of one, helps to immediately and deeply understand principles in the other. Many of this site’s posts revolve around this theme and I hope to one day integrate my thoughts on this issue.  Perhaps due to my rich, deep, personal familiarity with religion and language I am observing the deep insights of  ”consilience” — E.O.Wilson’s notion that all knowledge must be united at a deep level [2]. Or, more cynically, maybe this is merely the cognitive illusion of a mind that tries to vainly connect everything it touches. Either way, below is one more piece of speculation on the possible intimate connection between religion and language.

Some people intentionally leave their mother country because their newly adopted country offers something better for them. Yet amongst these expats, some have a great amount of difficulty learning to adapt to their new foreign home — they don’t learn the language, the gestures nor the customs. They tend to stay isolated or largely relate only to their own ethnic communities.

On the other hand, a smaller proportion of expats drench themselves in their new culture: learning the foreign language well, adopting many customs to some degree and having native friends with whom they interact using almost exclusively the local language, customs and values.

Religious believers may demonstrate a similar pattern when they leave their churches, synagogues, mosques or temples for complex, painful reasons.  These folks are leaving behind something they consider highly undesirable.  Some of these religious expats will fully enter the world of nonbelievers but some, though still considering themselves inwardly believers, in action stay isolated from the community of believers — living in a certain self-created purgatory.  Like cultural expats misfits, they are critical of both cultures.  They are often hoping to one day find a perfect congregation or denomination where they will again fit in, or they just give up and awkwardly exist in their new no-man zone.

Both the language example and this religious example contain two types of people — those who immerse themselves and those who remain isolated.  I wonder if these two types of individuals are the result of temperament differences. Perhaps some folks are more adaptive risk takers than others. Perhaps some folks are broader in their ability to find pleasure and happiness. Perhaps some people are more parochial by nature and though they feel an important need to leave a homeland or faith, due to their temperament they will have great difficulty creating an integrated new life.  Of course we all may virtuously rationalize our lives in non-temperament terms, but I wonder how much we really understand ourselves.

Notes:

1. “Expat” = (wiki) short for “expatriate”: a person residing in a lengthy time in a foreign land. Often confused with a non-existent word: “ex-patriot” and with connotations expat does not have. An expat can still be a patriot of their motherland.  [etymology: ex- "out of", patrie- "native land";  patris (Gr) "fatherland", patros - "father".]
2. See another post on the notion of conscilience, here: “Meta-thought and Theology“,

• God is perfect
• Imperfection is called ‘sin’
• Therefore God can not tolerate sin
• God made humans to keep him company
• But humans, given free will, inevitably  sin
• So God requires sacrifices to clean humans of their sin
• So God decided that animal sacrifices may help
• Though the smell of burning entrails originally pleased God, they were never truly enough so he decided that he would create a perfect sacrifice
• God procreated a perfect boy-god with a human girl — his son, ‘Jesus’
• God let Jesus be sacrificed to clean sin
• Now a Perfect God can keep company with Sinful humans but only if they believe this whole story with their whole heart

Well, that is one version of Christianity. See my listing the other Atonement theories.

But I don’t understand something about this version of Christianity:  If it was all about this sacrifice, why are Jesus’ teachings so important?  Why not just have the bad guys snatch up the baby Jesus and dash him against some rocks and Splat! the work is done.

I will guess at the possible answer:

Look, God works in different ways at different times — we can call these “dispensations”. When God, using his own mysterious clock, finally decided humans needed a perfect sacrifice, he also decided we needed better teachings than the ones he supplied in the Old Testament – the old dispensation. And he figured that three years were all that his son would need to give the teachings.

So, any Christian scholars want to help me on this one? Was Jesus put here on Earth to serve as a sacrifice or teach or both? And what teachings were so important to put off dashing baby Jesus against a rock?  To me, it seems obvious that there are a few different Jesus’ in the gospels — here I illustrate a teaching Jesus and a salvation Jesus.  The problems seem obvious, but nothing some good theological twists should not be able to remedy.

Notes:  This post was inspired by combined effect of two posts — both by nonbelievers, both criticizing Republicans:

1. Someone was making fun of Mormons so as to delegitimize the presidential contended Mitt Romney.  Seriously?  As if Christianity is less bizarre and Protestant candidates are safer?  I wrote a post called:  “Your god is weird” where I likewise went rabid when I heard someone making fun of Sikhs.
2. Someone spoke about the importance of Jesus’ teachings.  Even Atheists use Jesus to make a point.  Similarly, I wrote a post called: Was Jesus a Great Teacher?

Also, you may enjoy this short post:  Gospel debates: Where atheists miss the boat

The constitution was a compromise between various conflicting political philosophies — and with a little study, those conflicts are apparent. And it is for that reason, that it does not take much effort to get the document to say what you want it to say. Thus we have fluxing “interpretations” and amending over the last two centuries. The constitution’s flaw is that it is does not have one voice. But this is only a flaw when you assume it does have one voice.

But enough politics — I try to avoid politics on this blog, but instead, I am using the example of the US Constitution to point at a similar principle in the Bible. The Bible is not homogenous. Even narrowing down to the Gospels, it is obvious that there are many different Jesuses in the gospels. And history shows that people pick out their favorite Jesus to champion their favorite causes.

The New Testament Jesus is hugely mythologized. I won’t go so far as to say that there was no real person called Jesus upon which some of these various puppet Jesuses are based, but I really don’t think we can figure that out. But often Christians and Atheists alike think they can tell us who the real Jesus was, what he taught and what he was trying to accomplish.

I think it is important to not buy into the myth that the New Testament (or the Constitution) has one voice. The different voices are most instructive and far from trivial.

Notes:

(1) This post was inspired by two posts:

• By my conversation over at the excellent blog, “Groping the Elephant“
• By an interesting post concerning another upcoming book by David Fitzgerald. I am not sure if Fitzgerald fits into the supposed “mythicists” camp but I still find much of what he writes informative.

(2) See my post: The Homogenized Bible

The HMS Beagle

I have discussed how “religion” is a relatively new concept and when taken for granted (as if it were easily defined) leads to intellectual mistakes.
See these posts:

• Religion does Not Exist
• Defining Religion

I have also discussed how monotheistic, omnipotent deities (Allah & Yahweh) were built upon simpler gods with far less qualities. Ancient humans did not instinctively believe in gods that look anything like the monotheistic gods built up over the millenium.
See this post:

• Arguing for a Tiny God:  In this diagram, smaller circles illustrate less qualities and simpler gods/spirits/wonder.

Informing both of these themes, I thought I’d share this quote by a well-know theologian and biologist — Charles Darwin:

“There is no evidence that man was aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in the existence of an Omnipotent God. On the contrary there is ample evidence, derived not from hasty travellers, but from men who have long resided with savages, that numerous races have existed and still exist, who have no idea of one or more gods, and who have no words in their languages to express such an idea.”
– Darwin, Descent of Man, p. 65

Darwin supported the obvious view that religion evolved from very simple beginnings.  It is these simple components of the religious mind to which I often try to return our conversation. Both lofty notions of religion and of a god can confuse a dialogue.  Some would purport that their god slowly revealed himself [sic] and thus revealed his complexity, but we contend, instead, that humans slowly construed more complicated deities through evolutionary mechanisms.

Source / Notes:

• Biology of Religion @ Scilogs — this post inspired my post
• BTW, the HMS Beagle was a “Cherokee class” vessel British vessel many which had animal names:  Badger, Opossum, Wild Boar, Goldfinch, Beaver, Drake, Falcon, Barracouta, Weazle, Kingfisher and Ferret.

People imagine their god(s) intervening in the world to different degrees. The diagram above illustrates these different “tinkerologies”.  Below is a chart gives examples of believers for each type:

Theist can add some sophistication to these simple tinkerological positions.   Some, for instance, say God acted once but it is the same as constantly since he planned all the results of his one act.  Some will say that there is never any difference between the supernatural and the natural so God is not really intervening at all since he does not break his own laws. I never understood that model.

Questions for Readers:

• What corrections or additions would you make to my diagram or chart?
• How do you imagine any of these views is potentially harmful to a believer?
• If you are a theist, where does your green arrow point?

Some Theists feel they have good philosophical arguments that support their god. Here are the big ones:

• The Ontological Argument
• Kalam’s Cosmological Argument (see Luke’s posts: here and here)
• The Temporal Contingency Argument (see Luke’s fantastic post)

But these arguments, at their best, would only support a stripped-down, tiny god like the deist creator god. At their worse, they fail miserably. Nonetheless, these arguments don’t work as proof from their big god. Yet these theists, consciously or unconsciously, use these tiny-god arguments to sneak in their big god.  They do this because the word “God” carries the connotations of the bigger, falsely puffed-out gods: the Judge, the Miracle Worker or The Divine Presence.

So when debating a theist, be sure to ask them more about their god. Ask them which god they are trying to prove. Don’t let them fool you into thinking they have argued for their big, miraculous, tribal, anthropomorphic god.  Keep them focused on how tiny the god of their “proofs” actually is.

For an excellent short post on this same issue see Luke Muehlhauser’s: “I Don’t Care if God Exists“.

My version shows some of what distracts a person from noticing that there is nothing in the “Answered Prayer” plate.

David Hayward is a former pastor of a Christian church whose superb blog, nakedpastor, is creatively subtitled, “graffiti artist on the walls of religion”.  Please do visit his site, it is fantastic.  Davids honesty, openness and creativity are incredibly refreshing — and he knows his stuff!

My daughter is a budding artist and we often sit around and discuss David’s drawings.  This is the closest my daughter ever gets to Sunday School!

When an agnostic says “I am not sure if there is a god”, she means something very different from a Christian who says “God told me to sell my house and prepare for the apocalypse.” The Christian’s god is much bigger than the agnostic’s god — they mean very different things when they use the same word. Thus, before discussing “God” or “god”, it is important to see how many concepts, feelings and commitments are tucked into the person’s word, “god”.

I have made these diagrams to illustrate how god gets expanded as more and more concepts are captured within its borders.  The diagram above lists the main individual qualities that get packed into each expanding god.  I brainstormed a few qualities to illustrate the principle — please offer your thoughts.

The diagram to the right is a summary which labels the type of believers associated with each larger god.  What terms would you use?  Again, I am just trying to illustrate principles.

Any particular believer will, of course, not have all these qualities in their god.  And each believer will weigh the importance of each of these god-types differently.  That is why we must ask each believer for a picture of the god they have constructed in their head.

_______
Related Posts (same idea, different approaches):

• Dissecting God(s):  An exploration of the guts of the theologian’s god.
• Bursting Beliefs:  Your faith is a ballon, full of ideas and feelings.
• Modular God:  Building on the Spackle god.

Cris Campbell, a scholar over at Genealogy of Religion, has a fun post discussing classic research by Anna Rooth (1957) which classified 300 North American creation myths into 8 thematic types. Below I shameless copied a summary of those myths from Cris’ site.

Read the myth types and tell us which creation myth would be your favorite if you were creating your own religion. Then go read Cris’ blog — it is superb!

1. The Earth-Diver: this myth involves some being, often an animal, who dives to the bottom of an ocean to get sand or mud from which the earth and its denizens are created. It is found all over North America except for Arizona and New Mexico (i.e., the Puebloan area). Interestingly, the earth-diver creation myth is also widespread in Eurasia.

2. The World-Parents: this myth tells of a sky-father and earth-mother who jointly produce the earth and all living things. This usually involves the earth-mother giving birth and the fertility symbolism is heavy. This myth is found primarily in California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Similar myths can be found outside of North America in Japan and Polynesia. Take Our Poll

3. The Emergence: this myth involves a hole in the earth or a cave from which humans and animals emerge to the present world. It is found primarily in the southwest Puebloan area with some spillover the the adjacent Plains. This is the primary form of creation myth found in Meso-America.

4. The Spider as First Being: in this myth the spider is the first being who spins a web that holds the earth together or makes it firm and thus makes it possible for other beings to exist on it. How these other beings come into existence is highly variable, but the spider is at the center of the entire cosmology. Versions of this myth can also be found in south America and China.

5. The Fighting or Robbery: this myth recounts the heroic deeds of a culture hero or transformer who steals the earth and its creations from greedy, pre-existing beings who have been hoarding for themselves. The transformer then gives these gifts to humanity. This is the most common form of creation myth among Northwest Coast Indians and finds parallels in northeast Asia.

6. The Ymir: in this myth the world is created from the corpse of a dead giant or a dead man or woman. The skull is made into the sky, the bones become rocks, the hair becomes vegetation, and the blood becomes water. It is found throughout the North American continent. It is similarly widespread in Eurasia, and has interesting parallels with the Edenic myth.

7. The Two Creators Contest: this highly varied myth involves two creators, often siblings or relatives, who engage in a contest to “make” the best things with the result being the creation of the world and its contents. In some variations the world is created as a byproduct of a contest between the two. This myth is found in all areas of North America and has parallels in Asia.

8. The Blind Brother: this myth tells of two brothers who rise from the depths of the ocean bringing people with them. One brother tricks the other in a way that results in blindness; the blind brother in his anger then visits hardship on the people who have come to earth. This myth is found only in southern California and Arizona, and it told in adjacent parts of Mexico. Its distribution seems limited to these areas.

Every thought, even the ones we may call “reason”, are accompanied by emotional states — in fact, emotional states often precede and stimulate thought. We have all seen, heard or read people as they attempt to use logic and reason while they are raging angry. And anger, like fear, hatred, jealously, apathy and other emotions gleefully activate our brain’s bias switches — biases that all of us share. These biases turn reason into rationalization.  Rationalization is probably the vast majority of what we are actually doing when we feel we are using reason.

Thus, when having a discussion, sometimes it is perhaps more useful to focus on our emotional states than on our logic.  Emotions are what add value or weight to our ideas and our logic — we need to understand this critical principle.  Thus, ironically, the emotion of equanimity may aid a reasonable dialogue much more than reason. Sometimes I wonder if cultivating emotions would be a more fruitful endeavor than cultivating reason. Again: the common sense notion of reason is mistaken — thinking is always accompanied by emotions.  Cultivating our emotions may be the quickest way to further reasonable dialogue

Preemptive Caveats:

• Of course I think cultivating logic and bias filters are also critically important.
• I am not idealizing any particular emotions. I realize that even supposedly negative emotions can be useful.

Related Posts:

• Inseparable Thought-Emotion : Classifying emotions
• Emotions and Thought : A fun video
• The 12 Virtues of Rationality : Link to apost by Eliezer Yudkowsky where he lists lightness, evenness, relinquishment (emotional notions) are three of these.
• Vulnerability and Self-Disclosure :  Techniques to allow emotions to be transparent in dialogue

“Through Jesus, I am free from the burden of sin.”
- a Christian

Since we Atheists don’t believe that Jesus was a god nor that he  “defeated death”, so we also obviously don’t believe that “Jesus saves us from sin.”  But this concept is very important to Christians and for a very good reason.  “Freedom from sin” is a powerful freedom and not to be scoffed at.  But to understand how this Atheist could say such a thing, I need to do a little generous translation of the phrase “freedom from sin”.

At a very deep level, it is important to understand that we do not have to be a slave to our habits nor do we need to be crippled by the guilt of past poor actions.  Instead, we can forgive ourselves and ready to break our habits with each moment.  Such insight definitely offers a person a kind of joyful ”freedom”.  How does your worldview offer you that freedom?

I think that very different traditions, both religious and secular, have understood this insight and wrestled with various approaches to offer this freedom.   A Christian believes the solution is ontological: “the person of Christ, who defeated sin and death, lives in a Christian through his Holy Spirit and thus offering freedom from the guilt of sin” — or some variant of that.

Some Buddhists, for example, believe that the enlightened mind is here with us now and need not be clamored after but only awakened to (or some variant of that).  The enlightened mind offers us this freedom.

Are these extremely different traditions wrestling with shared psychological phenomena or do you think they are talking about different things?  Sure, Christians and Buddhists may be unhappy with the way I am expressing their doctrines and that is partly because there are so many varieties of each religion and partly because I am writing poorly. But I think some of you will understand what I am driving at.

Some Christians, my favorite sort, are transformation pluralists: a person who believes transformation, redemption, forgiveness and much more is available even to those outside their religion. In this way, as an Atheist, I am also a transformation pluralists: I believe religions can capture valuable techniques to improve their followers even if I don’t agree with their explanations of how their religion actually works.

Questions to Readers:  OK, go at it, correct my theology or tell me if you understand my point and help me come up with better examples.

Let it not deceive you that those who disbelieve go to and fro in the cities fearlessly. A brief enjoyment! then their abode is hell, and evil is their resting-place.
– Surah 3: 196-7.

__________

Related posts:

• Goyology: our attitude to those outside our group
• Soteriological Scope: will our afterlife differ from others?

On New Years Eve, Ce-Lo Green changed John Lennon’s lyrics from “And no religion too” to “And all religion is true”. Green was obviously promoting “religious pluralism”.

“Pluralism”, like many abstract terms, has many meanings. And I imagine that the people listening to Ce-Lo Green’s lyrics understood his meaning in very different ways that are captured by the variety of meanings of “religious pluralism”. Here are some of the meanings with my evaluation of the truth value of those meanings.  Remember, my definition of “truth” is “the best approximation of reality.”:

1. All religions say the same thing.
   Well, this is just hogwash, pure and simple. Some people believe Vishnu was a god and some do not. Both can’t be true
2. All religions can grant their believers eternal life.
   Wrong. None of them do.
3. All religions aim for the same thing.
   Well, this is more subtly wrong. Various religions have very different effects on people. People who say this usually are kind of being cocky and telling other people what their religion is trying to do.  See this great post by David Chapman: “The essence of all religions“.
4. All religions can grant their believers happiness and meaning.
   This is partially true. But depending on how they are used, they can also offer their believers pain and suffering. Some atheists think that all religions offer nothing but bad things — but they are blatantly wrong.
5. All religions have truth in them
   Well, this is blandly true. The Christian Bible says Paul was in Rome. Sure, that is true enough, I guess.
   And for another example, Surah 12:103 of the Qur’an says “And most men will not believe though you desire it eagerly.  Yep, that is true too.”  Yawn.

Tomas Rees at Epiphenom does fantastic reviews of research on religion. And his last post is great summary of his 2011 reviews.  Indeed, he has one-page summaries from each of the last three years. So if you have time, I suggest you make it a project to at least read the summary pages.  These quick reads could  further arm you to defend religion or aid you in attacking religion. But obviously, I would hope for a third option: to help you better understand religion.

• 2011 Summary
• 2010 Summary
• 2009 Summary

PS:  On Tom’s site is I often object that generalizing about “religion” is very precarious because under the umbrella of religion falls a huge variety of highly different activities. And Tom often tries to honor this objection. Perhaps I am simply being defensive because under some loose, rarefied definition of the term even I would be considered religious in a buddhish sense.

The diagram to the right illustrates a very simple classifications of the flavors of Buddhism in the U.S.A.  In my post “Buddhist Contradictions“, I describe how many of us who read about Buddhism often get confused as to the differences between these sects and even end up meaninglessly blending their ideas into a Buddhist soup in our brains.

Below I sketched a picture of the Buddhism books on my bookshelf as a case in point of someone reading a variety of Buddhisms.  In “One Dharma, whose?“, David Chapman continues his excellent series on “Consensus Buddhism” further describes why we may be rightly confused in our understandings of Buddhism.

Though I am attracted to many aspects of Buddhism, I have never been able to recommend a Buddhist book from my shelf to a friend.  None of them describe the Buddhism I am most drawn to.  Even David’s teacher, Ngakpa Chögyam, whose teachings I find closest to what I value in Buddhism, has a lot of traditionalism and magic language that is hard for me to relate to and his books aren’t written in a systematic manner so I can’t recommend them confidently to friends.

Questions for readers:  Share thoughts about your bookshelf, your recommendations and your doubts.

Questions for readers:

• If you think the Tanakh qualifies as great literature, which book(s) do you think qualify as great literature?
• Which books, or parts of books, do you think should be required reading for kid before college?
• Which do you think should be required for liberal arts students who are trying to get a “well-rounded education”?
• What other world-religion texts do you think should be required?
• Which secular authors do you think should be required?
• If not required in school, which to you recommend reading casually?
• Do you think reading the Tanakh is benefitial even without supplementary reading?

Let’s hear it!  (Yes, NT stuff is coming later)

The Tanakh (T+N+K)

The Jewish canon of scripture is called the “TaNaKh” which is an acronym for its three traditional subdivisions described below: Torah + Nevi’im + Ketuvim.  The Protestant “Old Testament” (OT) borrowed all the content of the Tanakh but their organizations differ.  – see the key below the diagram to understand the OT ordering.  See this wiki article for details of the Development of the Jewish Bible Canon.  Note, that “Bible” simply means “book”, but this diagram should make clear that what is called the “Bible” is not simply a book in the common sense of the word, but an actual library.

1. Torah (the teachings)

Torah means “Teachings” or “Instruction”.  It  derives from the Hebrew root y-r-h, “to shoot (an arrow),” and thus etymologically refers to that which “hits the mark”.  Thus we have the alias of  ”Torah Moshe” [The Torah (teachings) of Moses] and it is also called “The Five Books of Moses” or the “Pentateuch” [L: penta (five)+teuchoi (books)].

The Torah were written on one scroll and viewed as one unit.  But source theory scholarship shows these books do not adhere but are a composite of many traditions and sources.  See “Who Wrote the Bible” by Richard Friedman.

2. Nevi’im (the prophets)

Nevi’im means “The Prophets” in Hebrew.  Canonized after the Torah.  It is composed of 8 books — the last book is “The Twelve” is composed of 12 minor prophets but in this diagram I show them as separate books.  It is unclear how the first four books (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings) became part of the larger collection called Nevi’im.  Thus, perhaps the collection is named after its last four books.  Alternatively, the name Nevi’im reflects an awareness that prophets and prophetic activity play important roles in each of the first four books as well.

3. Kethuvim (the writings)

“Kethuvim” is a vague term meaning “writings” in Hebrew. This section contains a variety of collected written material, all entering the canon after the Nevi’im for different reasons; Psalms was used for prayers, the Song of Songs was probably first canonized as an ancient erotic poem used in wedding ceremonies, while the books of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes were known as wisdom literature.

Most sources divide Kethuvim into three parts; the first section composed of three large books (Psalms, Proverbs, and Job), the next section is called ‘hamesh megillot‘ (the five scrolls-as pictured in the diagram) which were copied together, much like “The Twelve” so that the individual short scrolls would not get lost. The five scrolls are read in this order in the litergical year: Song of Songs (Passover/early Spring), Ruth (Shavuot, late Spring), Lamentations(Av, the summer fast), Ecclesiastes (Sukkot, Fall), and Esther (Purim, late Winter). The last section is the three ‘historical’ texts: Daniel, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Chronicles.

Source: The Jewish Study Bible, Jewish Publication Society, 1985, 1999

1. Anthropological (self-declaration):  People who call themselves “Christians” are Christians.  This is the only definition with intersubjective verifiability.
         SC: For prescriptionist this definition is too broad.
2. Doctrinal (belief change): People who believe the correct Christian key doctrines are Christians.
        SC: With so many conflicting doctrines, who decides.
3. Praxeological (outer-behavior change):  People who act Christian are Christian.
        SC: Many Christians feel faith is far more important than actions.  Does someone slip out of being a Christian when they do something bad?
4. Ontological (inner-being change): Someone in whom the Spirit of Christ lives. [Do we know this by their self-report (#1), their stated beliefs (#2), their behavior (#3)?]  This does not solve the problem. Or someone who has asked Jesus to be lord of their lives — Once saved, always saved.
        SC:  Christians mutually accuse each others of being fake charlatans, self-deceived, or tricked by Satan and not having the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of Christ” (depending on their theology).  Thus, their is no objective measure.

Questions to readers:

• How do you define “Christian”?  Does your definition fit under one of my categories?
• Can you think of improvements or corrections of my definitions?

Some of the differences in the content of the canons is due to the fact that The Catholic, Orthodox Christians based their collection on the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (Greek) while the Protestants base theirs on the later Masoretic text.

More Reading:

• Books of the Bible (wiki): source for this diagram
• Biblical Canon (wiki)
• The Canon of the Bible (infidels.org)
• The OT Canon and Apocrypha (bible-researcher.com)

• Did Jesus exist?  How fictionalized is Jesus?
• How do we decide what Jesus taught or is purported to have taught?
• Do the Gospels contain the teachings of more than one person but all using “Jesus” as their voice?  How do we separate these teachings?
• What qualifies as “great” teachings?
• Were any of his actual or purported teachings “great”?

Like many apparently simple questions, I think it is obvious that without exposing these underlying positions and discussing them, two people could waste time in long fruitless debates.

In order to minimize abuse, minorities develop strategies. In America, as studies have shown, Atheist are envisioned as immoral, untrustworthy and unclean.  To fend off such inaccurate, cruel stereotypes, Atheists have developed ways to signal to Christians that they are safe and Christian-friendly.   Here are two such agreement-methods where Atheists try to establish common ground with believers. (in parenthesis I offer links to further posts describing these):

(1) I believe Jesus was a great teacher! (post 1)
(2) I believe the Bible is a brilliant piece of literature!

Are these concessionary appeasements actually true?
Do these appeasements work?

I will write more on this later. Meanwhile, can you think of other concessions that Atheists make in a Christian nation?

Let me add, however, that I know this works both ways.  I know Christians also make concessions which they may also find distasteful. For instance, certainly 6-day Creationists, being a minority, feel like they must hide at times. Perhaps even liberal Christians make concessions they later regret when they are surrounded by Evangelicals or Fundamentalists.

Let us know your experiences!

“But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. … There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. For example a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though he might still say he believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain points. Many of the good Pagans long before Christ’s birth may have been in this position”
–C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, HarperSanFrancisco edition, 2001, pp. 64, 208, 209

CS Lewis was a classicist. He found a way in his mind’s theology to keep some of his favorite Pagans from burning forever in a lake of fire. (Revelations 20:14-15)

Many Christians consider CS Lewis’ pluralist views on salvation to be heretical, but if there is a God, maybe these writings ironically illustrate that “God’s secret influence” were leading CS Lewis away from the mistaken notions of the Christianity that surrounded him.

In Lewis’ Chronicals of Narnia there is a similar pluralistic story where Temeth, fervent servant of the false god Tash, meets the true God Aslan and realizes that he has erred and will surely die. But Aslan welcomes him and explains,

“I take to me the services which thou hast done to [Tash], for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.”
–C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle”, New York: Collier, 1956, pp. 164-165

Of course, as a nontheist, God-stories don’t move me much. But looking behind these stories, I am moved to find CS Lewis transcending his own “Christian” identity label. Fundamentalists are right to see his thought as heresy. Praise Tash!

Related Post: My Favorite Type of Christians

Christopher Hitchens has left us. He will be deeply missed. I heard some Christians today paying him “respect” saying they loved the fact that he was brave enough to say what he believed. Yet they also confessed that they believed that Christopher was now “burning in a lake of fire, or rotting in hell or some such horrible, well-deserved, tortuous penalty for his non-belief”. My question? Should they come to the funeral — or in this case, is it odd for them to be posting a few compliments of some aspect of Hitchens’ personality. Or, for reasons I allude to above, should they just stay away from the funeral. Are these social lies useful in greasing society or should someone yell out that the king has no clothes when this happens?

• Soteriology (view of salvation)
• Eschatology (view of the end times)
• Christology (view of the messiah)
• Harmatiology  (view of sin)
• Bibliology (view of scripture)

Inviting a Christian to dissect their god, may seem offensive at first (just like this picture), but when you show them that even their hallowed Church fathers have done the same (though under the guise of “theology”) then they may forgive your audacious choice of terms and imagery.  Discussing the anatomy of a god can be fruitful.

Many Christians are unaware of the plethora of different opinions that exist within each of the -ologies.  My post called “My Favorite Christians“, lists most the major -ologies and several of the different views.  Here are examples:

• 4 Soterologies : inclusive, exclusive, pluralist and universalist
• 4 Eschatologies:  pre, post and amillenialists, and preterism
• 3 Christology:  high, medium and low
• 3 Harmatiologies:  original sin, ancestral sin, tabula rasa
• 2 Bibliologies : figurativists, literalists

With a little  combinatorial math we can see that using just these five traits, we can generate lots of different Christian gods:

4 x 4 x 3 x 3 x 2 = 288  different  gods!

Wow.  And to think, there are at least 20 or more traits (organs) their god has: thus there are thousands of  different gods possible which all bear the name of “Yahweh-Jesus”.  Some of these combinations are unviable, of course, but you get my point.

So, though each god-believer may visualize a similar white-bearded sky-dweller on the outside, with a little dissecting we see that their real inner gods vary hugely.  So don’t let a believer or a non-believer tell you there is only one type of Christianity, there are hundreds and hundreds of varieties — all easily revealed with a little theological dissection.  This sort of exercise is a curse to Religious Prescriptionists.

So don’t get sucked into arguing against a god that the believer does not imagine.  Instead, figure out the anatomy of their god but remember, gods have much more than just organs.  For instance, each god also has a circulatory system (the vibrant connection of their beliefs) and an immune system (polemic style) to enliven their deity.  So you must be careful in the dissection — don’t assume the approach you use on one believer is fair for another — even if their “-ologies” are similar.

Understanding the anatomy of a theist’s god will help you to avoid strawman arguments and it can also help the believer to actually grab responsibility for the creation of their own god.  Don’t be tricked by the word “god”, doing the dissection will reveal a multitude of different creatures.

When I read the five laws, I particularly liked the second law:

The probability that a certain person will be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

The reason I liked #2 is that it seems to have this natural corollary:

Everyone must assume that they themselves are a stupid person.

Now that is real wisdom!

_______
Sources & Notes:

• sanscrite cogitare, sanscrite loqui: A blog by Elisa Freschi – La Sapienza University of Rome
• The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity:  the essay with funny pics
• About Carlo Cipolla (wiki)
• See my post on Compartmentalization for an analogy of law # 2.
• HT to Jayarava for the meeting place for Elisa and his post addressing an aspect of our stupidity — from a Buddhist’s world.

Bible-thumper:

The Bible teaches not to steal or murder.

Sabio:

Come on, the Old Testament tells us that Yahweh ordering the destructions of entire cities — pregnant women, children, farmers, merchants — everyone!  You can’t imagine they were all guilty.

Bible-thumper:

Yes, the were all “evil to the core” otherwise Yahweh would not have ordered them killed.  Yahweh does not kill innocent people because that would be murder and Yahweh doesn’t condone murder.

Sabio:

Seriously, everyone? Can you imagine any nation or city now where everyone is totally ‘evil to the core’.

Bible-thumper:

Ah, you can’t compare to these days. The Bible tells us they were all evil. Every last one of them.

But the thumpers realize that their argument is weak and now offer 3 generic Christian caveats for why God is justified in killing innocents:

(1) The Evil Culture condemns Everyone:

Version 1: The utilitarian: “If the culture allows evil then all the people must be wiped or it will continue.” The great flood is just such an example, but it didn’t work.  So it appears Yahweh does not remove the bad apple from the barrel, he just burns the whole barrel.

Version 2: Tolerating Evil is Evil: Since horrible evil occurs in the culture, everyone in that culture is condemned because they did not stop it. Their tolerance condemns them. Other thumpers joined in say, “Yes, and America is next because of tolerating abortion and pornography! You will all die! Praise Jesus!”

(2) Everyone is Guilty from Birth:

Yep, the all too familiar Romans 3:23. By this argument, the word “innocent” is ridiculous because no one is innocent anyway. Yahway can wipe out whoever he wants and be justified.

(3) We can not understand God’s Mind:

This is the favorite escape clause of Christians. When the argument gets tough, they inevitably run here. It is the equivalent of saying, “OK, it may appear that innocents are killed, but that is because we have little brains. We have to trust the Bible.”

So that was my Sunday visit to the Church of Bible Thumpers.  I know you all have heard this stuff before.  I actually try to look for the good that religion can offer occasionally but encounters like this make me realize why it is import to speak out about Atheism.  Hope you will have a more reasonable Sunday than I have.

Note:  If you are sick enough to want to read the source and check to see if my paraphrases are accurate-enough, here ya go.  The sad thing about this post is that the author’s intent was to show why he doesn’t quote the Bible when he talks with non-believers (heathens).  But the comment thread shows why he indeed does need his Bible  – because he (and other fundies) don’t make sense without it. [or even with it].  OK, I realize this is a total waste of time and generic so I ask my readers for forgiveness.  But sometimes, I just can’t help myself and go back to look at a world I left behind.

On just arriving back in the States, I was invited to a party held by fellow students.  There I met an Asian woman — she was adopted from Korea by West Virginia parents. I was excited to meet an Asian living in my North Carolina world. A group of us were talking and I tried to share with her common thoughts about Asia. But she asked me to step outside and join her away from the crowd for a minute.  I thought we were going to share more stories.

But when she got me alone she said, “Look Sabio, I was adopted at one-year old. All my friends have been West Virginian whites. I don’t know or care anything about Korea. I am far more honky than you. So stop all the ‘Asian’ shit, will ya?”

She put me in my place.

This is a memory marker illustrating my continued stupidity through life.

And in large part we make our logic according to what we like. (p17)

People think that they can clear up profound matters if they consider them deeply, but they exercise perverse thoughts and come to no good because they do their reflecting with only self-interest at the center. (p18)

We learn about the sayings and deed of the men of old in order to entrust ourselves to their wisdom and prevent selfishness.  When we throw off our own bias, follow the sayings of the ancients, and confer with other people, matters should go well and without mishap. (p19)

These reminded me of the psychology studies showing the pervasiveness of self-deception and also reminded me of a Bible saying that I have often quoted: “In the counsel of many is much wisdom.”  But when I tried to look up the Bible passage, I could not find it.  Nonetheless, I found many Christian sites which, like me, felt it was a direct Biblical quote.  Though phrased differently, here are some verses from the book of  Proverbs which relay the same wisdom:

A wise man will hear and increase learning, and a man of understanding will attain wise counsel.
–Proverbs 1:5

The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, But he who heeds counsel is wise.
– Proverbs 12:15

Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.
– Proverbs 15:22

List to counsel and receive instructions, that you may be wise in your latter days.
– Proverbs 19:20

Surely you need guidance to wage war, and victory is won through many advisers.
– Proverbs 24:6

Question to Readers:

• Bible Misquote: Any Bible geeks reading this?  Does anyone know where that wording came from and how it got changed?  I’d be curious.  I must be from a famous movie, novel or sermon.    Hmmmmm?
• Blogger Disease:  Do you think bloggers are more prone or less prone to staying outside the counsel of many?
• Shared Wisdom:  What do you feel about quoting similar passages from widely different traditions?